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Perseverance in the War, the Interest and Duty of the Nation. 



SERMON, 



PREACHED IN THE CHURCH OF THE FIRST PARISH, 



LEXINGTON, 



SUNDAY, S P: P T E M B E R 11, 1 8 G 4 . 



L. J. LIVERMORE, 



Pastor of the Church. 



!^abll3lK& bn ilcqucst of tbc OTougtegatiort. 



BOSTON: 

PRESS OF T. R. MARVIN & SON, 42 CONGRESS STREET. 
1864. 



Perseverance in the War, the Interest and Duty of the Nation. 



SERMON, 

PREACHED IN THE CHURCH OF THE FIRST PARISH, 

/ 

LEXINGTON, 

4 SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 1864. 

Lr Jo^'XIVERMORE, 

Pastor of the Church. 



^ublisbtb hv ^qntst of tbt CongitgHtion. 



BOSTON: 

PRESS OF T. R. MARVIN & SON, 42 CONGRESS STREET. 
1864. 



i 



SERMON 



GALATIANSvi.9. 

LET tJS NOT BE WEARY IN WELL-DOING; FOR IN DUE SEASON WE SHALL REAP, 
IF WE FAINT NOT. 

We accept these words without hesitation as an 
abstract moral axiom. The praise of perseverance has 
descended to common-place, both as to worldly and 
higher concerns. If I were to urge it as a duty in 
your religious life, no one would questidrt the sound- 
ness of the doctrine. But just now. Providence has 
taken it out of the abstract, and put it before us in the 
shape of a momentous practical question. To-day, the 
question is as plainly put to us, as if it were written in 
the firmament in letters of fire : ' Will you persevere, 
and so reap the reward of all you have done ; or will 
you faint, and stop short and lose not only the results 
of what is yet to be done, but of all the immense ex- 
penditures already made ^ ' Nothing else half so much 
as this tests our religion to-day, whether we are old 
men, or young men, mothers of soldiers, or wives, 
tax-payers, or voluntary contributors to the great cause. 
There it stands on the sacred page, as if it had been 
written for just this emergency : ' Let us not be weary 
in well-doin^, for in due season we shall reap, if we 
faint not.' 



The words imply that it may happen, even in the 
plainest path of duty, that we find discouragement ; 
that success is long deferred ; that sufferings and sacri- 
fices abound ; and thus there comes temptation to faint 
and be weary. We are in this fiery trial now. The 
long, terrible path of war stretches wearily behind us, 
and we cannot yet see clear and certain change in the 
distance that stretches before us ; but more of these 
terrible slaughters, of these exhausting expenditures, 
of these financial disturbances which add to the toils 
and privations of the poor, and make many a strong 
man stagger. It is no reproach to us that we feel 
weary, and are strongly tempted to desist, to fly from 
this present crowd of evils, though it be to others that 
we know may be worse. I do not think highly of the 
wisdom or the goodness of the man who speaks flip- 
pantly and indifferently of the continuance of the war. 
He either has no mind to understand, or no heart to 
feel, the most awful woes and calamities of his fellow- 
men. I do not despise or severely condemn those who 
from a genuine feeling of the horrors of this contest, 
arc tempted to ask for its termination at any cost. I 
confess to feelings so sad, to sinkings of heart so hard 
to overcome, as to effectually bar me from looking 
down with self-complacent condemnation on any, be- 
cause they cry out in sincere sorrow for the end of 
carnage. 

liut because I have tlicse feelings, and only by 
earnest and conscientibus reflection, overcome them, in 
the ])lain. irresistible rontiiction tliat they are a sinful 
temptation, contrary to the teachings of reason, to the 
rc(iuirements of righteousness, and the will of God, I 
feel tiie more confident in urging the duty and necessity 
of persevering. Adopting the classification of the sol- 
dier who spoke in Faneuil Hall the other night, I say 



5 

that with those who cry out for peace, because they 
are at heart friends of the traitors, and who are ready 
to put arms into the hands of their partisans here to 
inaugurate civil war in the now peaceful north, I have 
no shadow of sympathy, A class more worthy of the 
detestation of all good people I do not know in the 
wide world. They are baser than the rebels them- 
selves, as much as disguised and renegade traitors are 
worse than open foes. With those who are chiefly 
moved to their outcry for peace by the dread of pecu- 
niary loss, I have not much sympathy. I never learned 
to admire Esau, who sold his birthright for a mess 
of pottage ; and there is certainly no more reason to 
admire those who would chaffer with malignant traitors 
in arms, and take the steps which go straight to the 
destruction of our glorious heritage, and the shameful 
extinction of our national unity, to save their dividends 
or escape their share of the cost of saving the nation. 
There is no shadow of justification for deciding this 
supreme question of peace and war, only or chiefly on 
grounds of financial interest, until we have gone as far 
to perpetuate our institutions, as our fathers did to 
plant the first seeds in this wilderness, and later, to 
assert their freedom and independence. If we should 
spend every cent of the accumulated property of the 
whole nation, and come back to our primitive condi- 
tion, our minds and muscles and broad territory with 
which and on which to rear a new fabric of civilization, 
we should do no more than the cause of our country is 
worth. There can be nothing but eternal dishonor, 
and the just judgment of God, awaiting us, if the love 
of money or the fear of its loss controls our settlement 
of such questions as those involved in this war. 

In the third class, the timid, there are some who are 
simply personally timid ; we will say nothing of them. 



6 

There are a far greater number, who for various reasons, 
feel discouraged, and are inclined to stop, because they 
see no use in going on. For all such, a few considera- 
tions of encouragement and reasons for perseverance are 
appropriate. 

First, then ; in any great work, undertaken for good 
reason, reasons of moral obligation, of religious duty, 
we have no right to stop. Whether we succeed or not 
is God's concern. Ours is to do our duty. In this 
lengthened struggle, if we began it for good and suffi- 
cient reasons, we are sharing the common experience 
of mankind in almost every great and good thing that 
has ever been accomplished either by individuals or by 
nations. I am not going to argue the question whether 
when we were so causelessly and wickedly assailed by a 
vast conspiracy, it was right for our nation to assert its 
authority and right of self-preservation. That question 
is settled. A million brave men have affirmed the right 
answer at the cost of life or its free venture ; and for a 
time at least, hardly a man was so blind, so base or so 
foolhardy as to say nay. Is the right of the thing 
changed any since three years ago ? Is the question at 
issue at all changed ? I know that collateral questions 
have entered, if we dare to call such questions as those 
pertaining to slavery, collateral ; but the unqualified 
declaration of the arch rebel lately showed that there is 
in fact just one question at issue ; the maintenance, or 
the destruction, of our nationality. Nor is there any 
change in the temper of our foes, the spirit of more than 
infernal pride and ibrocity with which from the first 
they have avowed their i)urpose. After all the bitter 
lessons they have had, they still talk of trampling us in 
the dust, plundering our cities, devastating our fields, 
wringing from us by the hard hand of military violence 
the full satisfaction of all their greed and revenge, and 



giving us peace, when we crawl in the dust at their feet, 
as cowed and submissive as their own wretched bond- 
men. Made mad by their cherished crime, that which 
prompted them to treason and revolution, which has 
nursed to frightful proportions every proud and cruel 
passion, their whole course is that of men beyond all 
reach of moral restraint and sense of decency. There 
would be as much hope in trying to negotiate with a 
pack of famished and enraged wolves, eager to suck the 
blood of women and children, as with these leaders, or 
rather, these ruthless tyrants of the southern people. 
There is no path open for negotiation with them. They 
themselves shut it in our faces, or rather in the faces of 
those who talk of it, with frenzied and extravagant in- 
sults. There is just one thing for us to do ; and it is to 
go on till they are utterly overthrown. It is what God 
gives us to do ; what I firmly believe we shall do. 

This alone is not a depressing view ; a great nation, 
consecrating itself, life and treasure, hands, minds and 
hearts, to a sublime task like this, even if so far we saw 
no light, no actual progress towards the end ; under a 
just and overruling Providence, there could not but be 
hope in this. But we do see progress ; and I wish next 
to show what there is to encourage and make us feel 
that the joyful time of reaping is not in the remote 
future, even if it is not close at hand ; that the fields are 
beginning already to grow white for the harvest of peace. 
There is no need, as there would be not time, to enter 
into particulars. We shall get a sufficiently plain and 
suggestive view of the course of events by passing in 
brief review the leading elements of the military posi- 
tion in the successive campaigns of the war. 

In 1861, after the first great reverse at Manassas, the 
summer passed in the formation and discipline of our 
great army around Washington. With some exceptions, 



the line between the military forces of the nation and 
the rebels, was that between the free and slave States, 
Delaware and Maryland being the chief exceptions, the 
Potomac there forming a natural line in our favor. Mis- 
souri alone, which geographically belonged with the free 
States, was, as the field of strife, about equally occupied 
by the opposing forces. The Mississippi from the mouth 
of the Ohio to the Gulf was in the possession of the 
enemy. They held the south bank of the Ohio for a 
considerable distance, and fortified positions of great 
strength in Kentucky. Not a position of commanding 
importance on the coast was ours, south of Fortress 
Monroe. And all this the rebels claimed and fully ex- 
pected to hold as their own. 

In 1862, we had gained possession of the great inland 
waters of North Carolina, thus permanently securing 
the greater part of the coast of that State ; of Port 
Royal, South Carolina, giving us control of nearly all 
the coast of that State, and its gems of the sea, the 
cotton islands ; of the forts erected by the enemy near 
the mouth of the Cumberland and Tennessee rivers, 
opening the way to the gulf States, and giving us sub- 
stantially the military possession of Kentucky and a 
large part of Tennessee. We had also driven all large 
bodies of the enemy from Missouri. After the terrible 
battle at Pittsburg Landing, and the abandonment of 
Columbus and Island No. 10, the line of the war moved, 
not to return except for a brief time, to the southern 
part of Tennessee. We had recaptured Fort Pulaski, 
so getting control of the chief port of the great State of 
Georgia, and we had taken New Orleans. Were not 
these great and important gains 1 And to balance them, 
we had not lost any territory or important position. 

But during this year, the main army, on whose opera- 
tions most seemed to depend, was not successful. I 



9 

need only name the campaign on the Peninsula, the re- 
treat, its second disastrous series of battles at and about 
Manassas, the invasion of Maryland and Pennsylvania, 
and the battle of Antietam, where the remnants of a 
brave but unfortunate army, reinforced with troops 
hastily forwarded from the North, by indomitable resolu- 
tion defeated and drove back the invaders, disappointed 
of their chief prey, leaving us in this part of the great 
field substantially as we were at the beginning. Thus 
the year drew to a close. We had the Mississippi as far 
as Memphis, and New Orleans was in our hands ; but 
the strong posts of Port Hudson and Vicksburg effect- 
ually closed the river for two hundred miles. The 
southerners, secure behind the strong mountain line of 
central Tennessee, ruled with an iron hand the loyal 
people of' the valley, and talked of retreating, when it 
came to the worst, and making a final, concentrated 
stand at Chattanooga. 

In 1863, we have the capture of Port Hudson and 
Vicksburg, and the opening of the Mississippi, which 
in themselves were enough to make it a prosperous 
campaign, had we simply held our own elsewhere. 
But in this year, we have also the heroic march of 
Burnside's men over the mountains of Tennessee, and 
the deliverance of Knoxville, and with it, of East 
Tennessee, and the seizure of the most direct railroad 
line from Virginia to the South-western States. At 
the same time, with parallel movement, Rosecrans 
marched to Chattanooga, and took possession of it. 
The battle of Lookout Mountain soon after, secured 
our line of communications ; and fixed us securely in 
that important position, while the enemy were forced 
back into Georgia. We also gained military possession 
of the greater part of Arkansas. So the great line 



10 

moved on, reducing the territory of the rebels to a 
narrow strip on the Gulf and the Atlantic. 

While these prosperous events were occurring else- 
where, the army of the Potomac was passing through 
another campaign hardly less trying and disastrous than 
that of the year before. The severe reverse at Fred- 
ericksburg occurred before the close of 1862. Early 
in 1863, took place the still bloodier repulse at Chan- 
cellors ville. Then came the second rebel invasion of 
Maryland and Pennsylvania, more formidable than that 
of the year before, but ending at Gettysburg in a 
bloodier battle and a more decided defeat than that of 
Antietam, with nearly the same result. The enemy 
retired, weakened and humiliated, and baulked again 
of the plunder and triumph which they had arrogantly 
boasted they were sure to obtain. And so we come to 
the beginning of the present year. 

Has there been anything in the present campaign 
reversing the steady progress of the three preceding 
years '? Have the rebels regained possession of any 
important place, or carried the line backward ] Two 
vital points have concentrated the energies of the two 
parties. Of these, one is in our full possession, after 
a long and brilliant succession of operations, in which 
our commander has used all his resources in assailing, 
and the rebels all theirs in defending the place, which 
now puts in our hands the second great line of railroad 
connection between the remote parts of the Confed- 
eracy, leaving them only a roundabout and indirect 
route, and gives us a position of great natural and 
artificial strength near the centre of the wealthiest and 
strongest of the rebellious States. If we have not yet 
gained llichmond, it is at least true that we have never 
before been in any better position than now with refer- 
ence to that place. We have also practically possession 



11 

of the harbor of Mobile, the last but one of the im- 
portant seaports held by the rebels east of the Missis- 
sippi. We have already this year made a long march 
towards the possession of every strong position, every 
important seaport of the rebellion. 

This is the second ground of encouragement, and 
reason for perseverance : that we have made steady and 
constant progress towards the righteous and triumphant 
termination of the war. We have sujffered defeats, 
many of them disastrous ; but as a whole, the course of 
the war has been one of steady progress towards a 
complete triumph. 

But the question may now meet us : Are we not well 
nigh exhausted by what has already been done, exhaust- 
ed of men and of money. It does not require us to 
trifle with the immense sacrifices already made in both, 
to answer. No ; we are not exhausted, or coming near to 
being so. Our population is not drained of its men of 
the proper age, health and strength to do military duty. 
I do not feel inclined to consider now how valid the 
reasons are which induce so many to meet the call of 
duty by paying money for substitutes. Each may justly 
settle such questions for himself But of the fact there 
can be no question, that our country is yet full of men 
able to do military duty. We have not robbed either the 
' cradle or the grave,' to use Grant's expressive phrase. 
We have not been obliged to stretch the limits of the 
military age either up or down, beyond what experience 
has shown to be suitable. There is no apparent, danger 
that we shall be obliged to do so. The drain on our 
life and strength has been very great, too great for any 
c^ise less sacred and momentous ; but it cannot by any 
figure of speech be properly described as reaching or very 
nearly approaching, the point of exhaustion. It is prob- 
able that more than half of all the immense host who have 



12 

entered the service since the war began are now for one 
or another reason, back again in civil occupations, 
and able, if the call should be imperative, to take up 
their arms again. Most of them, I believe, would do' 
it, rather than see the cause fail, and more readily but 
for the natural feeling that others who have not yet 
rendered any personal service should take their turn 
first. 

Are we then financially exhausted ? I am no more 
disposed to speak lightly of the pecuniary cost of the 
war, than of its expense in life and health. But im- 
mense as our expenditure is, it is less than statistics 
show to be the surplus earnings of the people. Under- 
stand this. The thousand millions, (it is in fact much 
less than this,) which the war costs us annually, is much 
less than the industry of the nation creates, each year, 
over and above the cost of our living. We may look 
at it in another view. Suppose the war debt at the end 
of the present year to be two thousand millions, it will 
be very nearly ten per cent of the property valuation 
of the nation. Is a man financially exhausted, who 
being rich, and in full possession of his faculties, owes 
a debt amounting to one-tenth of his estate 1 In fact, 
the question of financial exhaustion cannot come before 
us. A government like ours, has no power to exhaust 
the finances of the nation. It may exhaust its own 
credit, may reach the limit of its power to get possession 
by tax or otherwise of the nation's property. 

This whole pretence is exposed when we consider 
that if the nation would loan to its Government only 
that part of its property which is represented by the 
national paper money, leaving farms and workshops, 
factories and railroads, and every form and kind of real 
property untouched, it would relieve the Government of 
all its embarrassments, and turn the whole financial 



13 

current back from inflated prices, and a depreciated 
currency to, or nearly to, a specie basis ; and in doing 
this, would reduce the cost of the war to less than 
half of its present nominal amount. 

Our national expenses are, as has been said, less than 
the surplus earnings of the people, so that we are not 
growing poorer, but only not growing rich so fast, as 
before the war. It is also the fact that our capacity to 
pay a debt is increasing in an immense ratio. Every 
new farm settled in the wilderness, and more are settled 
now than ever before, every new mine opened, every 
new road built, every family of immigrants, and they 
are coming faster and of a better quality than almost 
ever before, is an addition to the debt-paying power of 
the nation. I think it is not an extravagant estimate, 
that if the war were to close now, each man's share of 
the debt would be hardly half what it would have been, 
if the same amount of debt had been laid on us four 
years since. The immediate difficulties of the national 
finances are not small ; but there are grounds of hope 
for relief not very distant ; the check on profuse and 
needless imports ; the impulse given to exportation ; and 
above all, the solid and substantial reasons, found in 
facts testified to by our most competent and judicious 
commanders, for expecting soon a contraction of our 
military operations, as the armies of the rebels waste 
by the inevitable losses of war, for which, having 
already " robbed the cradle and the grave," they have 
no compensation in farther conscriptions. 

I feel how imperfectly I have presented the reasons 
for encouragement and perseverance in this great 
struggle for freedom and national life. Bad as the war 
is, a wretched, dishonorable peace would be worse. It 
would, I truly believe, be a sin against God, and a 



14 

crime against man to hold any parley with these 
enemies of all that is good, except on the terms con- 
stantly held out to them, by our Government ; submis- 
sion to the authority of the nation, and the reference 
of all disputed points to the proper legal tribunals, 
after peace is re-established. Vengeance on them for 
their crimes from human hands I do not desire. Their 
crime is too great for the punishments which we think 
just for common murderers. Let that be left to God, 
to their own consciences, when the terrible day of 
awakening comes, and to the abhorrence of all future 
generations. I would not have now, never have 
wished to have, any element of vindictiveness in our 
treatment of them. So far as their own crime has 
opened the way to righting the wrongs of their slaves, 
let it be held as being God's providential help to the 
wronged and suffering. We cannot enslave, nor suffer 
to be re-enslaved by their former masters, those once 
actually freed. What the full extent of the work of 
the war must be in this respect, I am not prepared to 
say. It will be time to settle this question, when it 
alone stands in the way of peace. At least, we can all 
rejoice in the belief, that this great crime and fountain 
of crimes, cannot long survive the convulsion which 
it invoked for the sake of its own expansion and 
perpetuity. 

In saying so much of the war, and of the duty of 
the nation, I claim to be no partisan. The great 
majority of the people of all parties are resolved to 
maintain the wholeness of our country. Questions 
of the best men and measures to make sure of this end, 
belong to other times and places. It is right for me, 
however, here, to invoke a spirit of candor and mutual 
justice, in the civil struggle that is coming. No good 
cause is strengthened by railing, false accusations, mis- 



15 

representation and duplicity. Let the issues be frankly, 
fairly and distinctly stated and argued ; and let the 
people decide, not by the stormy fury of passion, but 
by the calm guidance of reason. So will the voice of 
the people be the voice of God. 

It remains for me only to add a word as to the imme- 
diate appeal made to you to-day, in behalf of our sick 
and wounded soldiers. The general question of the 
duty of ministering to their comfort has long been 
settled. What was right two or three years ago, is 
right now. Can any class plead for exemption from 
this cain Those who are exempt by law from doing 
military duty, surely owe it to those who give life and 
health for the country, to secure to them when sick or 
suffering from wounds, all that will contribute to their 
comfort. Those who are liable by law to serve in the 
army, but who so far have escaped, or have induced 
others to serve for them, cannot lie down to sleep with 
a good conscience, knowing that those who are fighting 
for them, are left to endure greater sufferings than they 
need, for want of what we at home could send to them. 
Mothers, sisters, wives, you would not withhold your 
help from your own loved ones, if they were in the 
service and sick. Will you fold your hands in indiffer- 
ence, because the sufferers are the children, brothers, 
husbands of others '? Nay ! They are all our sons, 
brothers, fathers, suffering for our country, for our free 
institutions, for our future peace, prosperity, strength 
and honor. They are entitled to our love, gratitude 
and liberal service. 

As members of this old and honored parish, honored 
in the memory of that other great conflict for liberty 
and human rights, it rests on you to maintain its 
character, its honor, now ; to enable those who are 



16 

associated in its name, to go on in their sacred work of 
charity and mercy, as well as patriotism. It is yours to 
sustain and encourage them by such gifts as the time 
and the cause call for. Your gifts hitherto have been 
held sacred to the last cent, and used to send the 
utmost practicable amount of useful articles to our 
hospitals. Your gifts now and hereafter will be used 
in the same way, and may the blessing of Almighty 
God go with them, and remain with you. 



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